Posts from the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Today’s post is by The 800lb Gorilla, a conservative blogger and acquaintance of mine for some years. The piece is a response to my assertion that many on the left are trying to distance the French terrorists, who executed the staff of “Charlie Hebdo”, from Islam altogether. In fact just today I heard a report that a Frenchman declared “they were not Muslims, they were terrorists”. Well of course, they were Muslims and the degree to which they differ from “the average Muslim” has as much to do with our perceptions as it does any truth, which Gorilla discusses below.

Some quick definitions to help with understanding the piece.

“dar al-Islam vs dar al-Harb”: The notion that the world divides into two parts, the “clean part” which embraces Islam and the “dirty” part which does not, and is destined for chaos and strife.

Anyone surprised by this (Rutherford…) is a complete and total moron. If this is a monumental revelation, that Obama and his ilk think so poorly of the American people, then you likely voted for him and the cabal of Democrats that have been pissing on the electorate for more than six years now.

You’ve been a fool. A mark. You have aided and abetted the crime of the century as Obama and the Dem Mafia have raped and pillaged the future of the nation. You are an accomplice to High Crimes and Misdemeanors, and deserve condemnation and ridicule for your actions. You are either grossly incompetent, or grossly complicit, in the actions of this Administration.

You should be ashamed.

And while the Dems attempt to dodge Gruber, they will ultimately fail:

Except that:

And:

But this is the smoking gun. Nothing Obama can say at this point to separate himself from his ilk:

Of course, you were told, so claiming ignorance won’t spare you. Every claim made by Conservatives about this Administration has been born out in fact. From the FACT that Obamacare was going to greatly increase the cost of healthcare and purge millions from their current doctors, to Obama’s naivete on National Security on issues ranging from Russia to Iraq to Iran, to Obama’s flagrant violation of law after law after law. Your head resting in the sand excuses you not from your role in enabling this Administration to shred the fabric of law, security, and economic well-being for the American people.

Of course, Obama is about to once again shit on the Constitution and the rule of law with his “executive action” on amnesty. He has no legal standing. If he does this, he will be violating a body of legislation that spans years.

The question is, will you, the dupe that has been consistently abetting this Regime, continue to do so, recognizing that your support is enabling a crime?

So, I was at a meeting the other day to see a presentation on radicalism. The presentation, presented by a local well known professor focused on the psychology of radicalism, examining commitment, motivation, and the role of group dynamics.

It was an interesting presentation, of which I’ll provide a quick synopsis to capture the point of this post.

Radicalization

The professor provided a quick breakdown of what radicalization means: “support/adoption of radical means to address a problem.” Of course, this required a definition of radical: “a means that is contrary to generally accepted norms and values.” From this, the professor identified two implications

The perception of radicalism is subjective to the value and importance one—and society in general—place on those norms and values.

Radicalism is a matter of degree in the willingness of one to move outside those norms and values.

The professor then equated radicalization with extreme commitment, from which he identified a theory of three factors the develop commitment:

Motivation (Individual level)

Ideological Narrative (Cultural level)

Group Dynamics (Social level)

The professor, at this point synthesized motivation down to a quest for significance. This is interesting in that the professor breaks it down as such:

The Significance Quest:

Significance loss (individual level, level of social identity)

Threat of loss

These therein introduce an uncertainty about the self, need for certainty (dissonance)

Which then provides an opportunity for significance gain and the removal of uncertainty

The significance quest then uses ideology to reinforce the goal of significance and providing the means to attain it. For example, in Islamic terrorism, the return of the global Caliphate would be the goal and the use of Jihad is the means to attain it.

Group dynamics, through persuasive ideology and charismatic leaders, provide entry of uncertain individuals into a social process that acts as a conduit for the Significance Quest.

Basically, the professor’s point was that individuals who are less successful, who feel insignificant, and who are psychologically uncertain, are more easily susceptible to radicalization. Radicalization is about self-esteem.

So where am I going with this? The professor, who has traveled extensively and conducted many interviews and studies with radicalized individuals, displayed some empirical data that was quite telling. In particular, there were two charts the professor displayed that immediately jumped out at me.

I will not provide the chart itself, by I will provide an accurate representation:

As you can see from the chart, individuals who are successful are independent, whereas those who are failures are interdependent. Let us let that sink in for a moment: success breeds independence and failure foments interdependence. It takes a village anyone?

Couple this with the second chart:

Like the first chart, this one demonstrates that those who are successful identify as individuals, whereas those who fail, tend to identify in a collective. Now, the professor was studying terrorism, so the collectives he was most interested in were religion and nationalism, but one could easily substitute ideology. In fact, especially in the Error of Obama, Obamaism is the religion because everything is based on faith, despite what the facts or reality dictates.

The Left’s NEED for Failures

These charts are extremely telling, and explain so much about how the left engages and expands its base. It explains the policies, the decisions, and the ideology. Liberalism, Socialism, and Communism have just been summed up.

Conservatives have pointed out the consistent failures of leftist ideology for years, and I have commented several times on the left’s tactic of pulling everyone down to the lowest common denominator. This tells us why; the left is made up by, and caters to, failures. Of course, not everyone on the left is a failure, but that is the target demographic because failures need others because, well, they’re failures.

This explains what the left has done to the “black community”, and why it is necessary to destroy the family unit, diminish educational and professional work habits and expectations, and center all problems on race. Failure forces interdependence, and if there is anything “successful” about liberal policies, it is that they force collective failure. Of course, this failure then forces collective identification and interdependence, which becomes a self-licking ice-cream cone as collective liberal policies breed new failure—and the cycle then continues.

I have always looked at the left as a bunch of incompetent boobs, who’ve religious zealotry to a failed ideology inherently foment failed policy after failed policy. But now I have to sit back and really question this. Is it incompetence or intentional? Can a movement possibly be wrong every time?

Sure, this starts to sound awfully Alex Jones, but Conservatives have always believed that liberal leaders intentionally looked to force popular dependence on the state, and thus on them, for survival. That is demonstrably clear just based on the last six years of food stamp rolls, unemployment, and the entire premise of Obamacare. None of these were ever intended to fix anything. In fact, the exact opposite has occurred in each case; more—not less—people are on food stamps, more—not less—people are unemployed, more—not less-people are without healthcare coverage.

The Obama Administration has been the epitome of failure. Its foreign policy has made the United States weaker, less liked, and more isolated. Its economic policy has bankrupted the treasury, hamstrung the economy, and damaged the fundamental ability to get a decent job. Race relations have plummeted as every single criticism of the Administration have been blamed on race instead of accepted on the merits of the facts. The nation has never been more divided or partisan. Class warfare, race warfare, political warfare—this Administration is destroying the fabric of the nation.

Obama’s fundamental change has been to celebrate failure, which clarifies who the radicals are in this country…

It is becoming increasingly clear that liberals are real pussies. No, seriously. Not just pussies, but really annoying sack’s of shit. Case in point, Thanksgiving.

Who the hell plans an argument, especially on Thanksgiving? More importantly, who plans an argument, but then has to get strategy advice on how to conduct the argument in the first place? If you have little confidence in your ability to hold your own ideologically, then you should probably shut the fuck up, because aside from embarrassing yourself, do you really think that if you need talking-points to start the damn fight that you’re going to be prepared to finish it when Uncle Tom (seems appropriate for the racist left) squarely plants a size 12 in basic facts and logic up your ass? Let’s look at some examples…

Of course, these are just building off of the likely, and natural, trajectory expected from Obama’s push for Obamacare during the Holidays. I suppose the previous will sort-of prepare you for the obvious, and lets be honest, any rabid liberal is likely in for a serious ideological ass-whooping tomorrow because all their rhetoric, talking points, and Administration regurgitations have demonstrably fallen on their face. This roll-out has been a complete and total failure, and it isn’t going to get better.

So I say, be the hero, be the champion in the greater family by doing what every other family member wants to do, but hasn’t had the temerity to do: walk up to that exceedingly liberal family member, wrap them up in a huge hug and say you love them, and then, step back, and knock that motherfucker out!

In military circles we have a phrase to guard against hype—expectation management. Pretty simple, don’t overly expect because the “fog of war” and the “friction” of action, to borrow terms from Clausewitz, ALWAYS impact the outcome. As such, many live by the mantra of, “plan for the worst, hope for the best.” Which brings me to a couple important definitions:

Hope: noun: 1. a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.

2. (archaic) a feeling of trust.

Verb:1. want something to happen or be the case.

Hmmmmm, there’s a couple terms here that need further clarity, for our more challenged citizens who seem to struggle with the meaning of things.

Want: verb: 1. have a desire to possess or do (something); wish for.

2. (archaic) lack or be short of something desirable or essential.

Noun 1. (archaic) a lack or deficiency of something.

2. a desire for something.

Desire: noun 1. a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen.

Verb 1. strongly wish for or want (something).

Wish: verb 1. feel or express a strong desire or hope for something that is not easily attainable; want something that cannot or probably will not happen.

Noun 1. a desire or hope for something to happen.

Anyone who supported Obamacare lived/s in this vernacular. This is the language of the left, and it decidedly lacks some really important terms, like:

Plan: noun 1. a detailed proposal for doing or achieving something.

2. an intention or decision about what one is going to do.

3. a detailed diagram, drawing, or program, in particular.

Verb 1. decide on and arrange in advance.

2. design or make a plan of (something to be made or built).

Accountability: noun 1. the fact or condition of being accountable; responsibility.

Honest: adjective 1. free of deceit and untruthfulness; sincere; morally correct or virtuous; fairly earned, esp. through hard work; (of an action) blameless or well intentioned even if unsuccessful or misguided; simple, unpretentious, and unsophisticated.

adverb: 1. used to persuade someone of the truth of something.

Nothing that is happening right now with Obamacare should be a surprise. None of it. Aside from the common-sense perspective of knowing that there was no chance that the Federal Government was going to do this well, all of the woes that are being inflicted on the American people were predicted in 2009 and 2010. That viiiiiiiiiiiillllllllllllllllllllllllleeeeeeeeeeeeee Tea Party said this would occur, over and over again. The Tea Party were front and center on predicting the sky rocketing costs of health insurance and they very much predicted that millions would lose their insurance plans. Obama created the Tea Party, and now he has validated the Tea Party like no one else could do.

The one disagreement I’ve had with the Tea Party was the constant effort to delay or prevent Obamacare after the Supreme Court ruling. Chief Justice Roberts was on to something when he said that the Supreme Court was not intended to protect the people from their electoral mistakes. I have been of the frame of mind for some time now that America needs the pain of this travesty. No matter how many times Grandma told you the stove was hot, it took getting burned to really learn the lesson. Well, right now, America is getting really burned.

Obama’s strategy has always been to delay the impact of this law, knowing it was not going to be received well. He has repeatedly violated the law by arbitrarily delaying components of the law to fit his political constituency, or to minimize the blowback of the law’s effect. But October 1st brought about the end of that and splashed cold water of the face of the deluded who continued to hope, want or desire something better from an Administration that has sold this law as highly as it has.

There is a sense one gets, a feeling of betrayal tinged with anger and disappointment, when one gets swindled. When that great deal turns out to be a lemon or when you know that you’ve been robbed. I’ve repeatedly called Obama a Carpetbagger, but since his election in 2008, he’s really been a snake oil salesman:

“Snake oil is an expression that originally referred to fraudulent health products or unproven medicine but has come to refer to any product with questionable or unverifiable quality or benefit. By extension, a snake oil salesman is someone who knowingly sells fraudulent goods or who is himself or herself a fraud, quack, charlatan, and the like.”

I thought in 2012 that the American people were going to see through Obama and the Democrat party’s lies, smell the bullshit, and punish them accordingly. What I didn’t take into account was the need to be burned. America, on both sides of the isle, has been exceedingly patient and accommodating to this Administration. Had President George W. Bush done any one of the myriad of flagrancies that this Administration has repeatedly done, the media and the people would have raised hell. But this Administration has been able to get away with it because A) ALL critics of its policies are defined as racists, and B) America sincerely wants to get beyond the race argument and thinks that if Obama is successful, then we will have made progress. While Obama has been able to hide behind the black half of his ancestry, the Dem party has not.

2010 was a clear rejection of the party platform, Obamacare in particular. Folks like David Plouffe, who unfortunately are associated with Obama’s white half and thus can’t hide behind skin tone, are hoping that Obamacare doesn’t hurt them in 2014 like it did in 2010. On ABC with George Stephanopoulos, Plouffe commented that Obama was not in a similar situation to President Bush in 2005:

“But where could we be in four or five months?” Plouffe continued. “Hopefully the website is working fine and people are enrolling for health care. Hopefully, we won’t have another Washington dysfunction—which is one of the reasons people are upset, it’s not just health care—and we pass a budget and move forward, and the economy continues to strengthen. So we could be in a much different place three, four months from now. No doubt this is challenging time, but I think you have to have some perspective here. The story could change.”

“The political notion that next year’s election, or 2016, the Republican platform is going to be getting rid of health care?” Plouffe continued. “Millions of people will be signed up. It’s an impossibility.”

Hopefully? Could? The Administration, and the Dem party in particular, are hoping things improve, and based on this hope, are asserting that the political opposition, who has consistently pushed for getting rid of Obamacare since the law passed via unscrupulous means, will not continue to do so. Do I need to define insanity?

No one trusts Obama anymore. Dems have been able to get by on Obama’s trust and likeability factors, but those are collapsing. To think that the Dems will be able to escape accountability for this disaster seems impossible:

Even while Dems are admitting that they knew this would happen, I have no confidence in our electorates low information voters willingness to seek the truth on this. The only way they are going to see the truth of the matter is to be burned. It is unfortunate, but necessary:

And maybe they’re learning:

I was talking to a friend of mine a couple days ago and we discussed how bad this has been, not just for the Administration and Dems in general, but for America. He commented that Obama’s legacy will be on par with Jimmy Carter. I told him that I most certainly hope not. There is a huge difference between incompetence and deceit. We should hope that Obama is not painted as Carter 2.0, but as Nixon 2.0. The people, and future generations, need to look back at this President and his Administration accurately, not as a group incapable of leading the nation, but one a group more than willing to lie, cheat, and steal to achieve power at the expense of current and future generations. Obama is, and has been, a tyrant, and should forever be regarded as such.